This has happened because those who have made the case for War have offered flimsy and shallow excuses, perhaps throughout history, but especially in the past few decades. This is giving War a bad name. Before long, those who are thinking “Blessed are the Peacemakers and Love Your Enemies” are going to take over.

The Bush crew could have done much better in 2003-04 than to make the case for causing the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens, and 4,400 US soldiers, in addition to the thousands of wounded and maimed, by claiming that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Colin Powell’s phony UN speech, lifting the vial, and Condoleezza Rice’s reference to the nuclear cloud - were inexcusable. Besides, the UN Weapons Inspectors who were removed during the run-up to the War, hadn’t completed their work. Remember Pres. Bush asking, “How much time do they need?” Anyone paying attention to US Marine Officer Scott Ritter, a UN Chief Weapons Inspector in Iraq during the 90s, heard him say prior to the war that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

And the case that Iraq had al Queda connections that linked Iraq to the 9/11 bombings was doomed from the start. Millions accepted that “the Administration must know more than we do”, but that approach will not last very long.

The case for the First Gulf War didn’t work too well either, i.e., Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. The US Ambassador to Iraq April Gilespie, as many of us knew, had “declared that Washington, ‘inspired by the friendship and not by confrontation, does not have an opinion’ on the disagreement between Kuwait and Iraq; …giving Saddam a diplomatic green light from the United States to invade Kuwait.”

The invasion of Afghanistan was attributed to the need to attack supporters or those who ‘harbored” al Queda (ok, so none of the 19 suicide bombers were from Afghanistan), but this rationale could not possibly have had the potency of the testimony before Congress three years before the invasion. “John J. Maresca, vice president for international relations for UNOCAL oil company, testified before the US House of Representatives, on Central Asia oil and gas reserves and how they might shape US foreign policy. The oil reserves are in areas north of Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Russia. Routes for a pipeline were proposed that would transport oil on a 42-inch pipe southward thru Afghanistan for 1040 miles to the Pakistan coast. Such a pipeline would carry about 1 million barrels of oil per day. Maresca told Congress then that: "It's not going to be built until there is a single Afghan government. That's the simple answer."

Of course the reasoning that we are bombing Libya to save civilian lives would have worked better if we were thinking more broadly about saving civilian lives in Syria or Yemen (or perhaps 600,000 civilians a few years ago in Rwanda).

So these flimsy and shallow reasons given by the US government don’t work too well. There are better reasons to support war. Here are a few:

First, the prophet, George F. Kennan, in a 1948 US Dept. of State official planning document had said, that with 6.5% of the world’s population, the US controls 50% of the wealth. As he said, we must be prepared to use military force to maintain this inequity and use of words like altruism would be counter productive. He stated, “as the object of envy and resentment" - America must "devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity". This covers “our national interest” argument best. This argument alone would be sufficient to justify war better than the most recent flimsy excuses.

Secondly, we are smarter than they are. We know better how to organize government and we should show the world how to do it. If they were so smart they would have invented the IPhone, the IPad, the Blu Ray. the MP3 Player and the NFL. And in the next 50 or so years, our brilliance alone will give us a better idea about alternative energy sources. And in another 50 years, we will show them how to devise an economic system that assures that wealth is not accumulated by a handful of rich and powerful while 1/6 of the people live in poverty. That already happens in some of these other countries, but we can show them a better way to do it.

Thirdly, we should install our version of democracy. It stands to reason that where people have democracy they will have peace. (This will need some fine tuning because since 1941, our own US democracy has been to war on foreign soil in WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Dominican Republic, Kosovo, Panama, Grenada, First Gulf War, current Iraq War, Afghanistan and Libya; and has financed war in Nicaragua and El Salvador (despite pleas from Archbishop Oscar Romero to Pres. Carter to stop sending weapons and bullets, “they are killing our people”), and Pres. Nixon asking Henry Kissinger, “Will our hands show in this?” referring to the death of Salvador Allende of Chile, or the CIA overthrow of the Iranian leader in 1953 and installing the oppressive Shah, or our meddlesome financing of opponents of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. Or that since 9/11 we have had 160,000 homicides in the US. All that is just a distraction from the major point: where people have democracy they will have peace, just like we do in the US.

These three ideas i.e., a)military force is justified in enforcing the inequity that favors the US; b) that we know better than they do; and c) that our type of democracy will produce peace - are far better than the ones offered by our government for the killing, violence, destruction and mayhem that is being caused by War.

So how will we manage our foreign policy and propensity for war in coming decades? Will we continue to use the old arguments, justifying force by our exceptionalism? Will we continue to insist we are somehow special compared to the rest of humanity? Will we continue to insist that military force and war is the way to produce peace? Will we create a new Beatitude - Blessed are the war makers?

Or will we embrace a policy based on the basic humankind Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. Perhaps we might even embrace a 2000 year old exhortation to love our enemies and to be blessed as peacemakers.